Thanks to the complete non-response I received from anyone who I gave or sold the book to at SPX, I suppose I was living in a bit of a bubble when it came to the Near, Mississippi story I published in my first mini-comic. As with much of my work, when I was actually working on it, I felt like everything in the story was done right. Sure, the art could use some work, but at least I was telling a tight, if a bit obtuse, story.
Jai Nitz's review (scroll down to the end), which I am eternally grateful for, proves that I was probably being a bit too generous to myself. Maybe it's because it's the first review of this material? That's why I'm so despondent? I swear, whenever I flipped through the 11 pages of this story, I was struck by how well I had pulled things off. Again, having the benefit of being in my own brain, I could follow all the subtle threads of the story. Any readers of the story did not have the same luck.
There are monsters (or maybe aliens, I can't really tell) for no reason. Do they represent something specific, or are they there just for the sake of being weird? I don't know, and I don't know if Birdie does either.
Ouch. That was the one that stung. See, what I was trying to do (and to anyone who hasn't read the story, read: all of you, this will probably lost on you) was find a way to personify the phenomenon of the Next Guy. The guy who falls in love with someone and has to deal with the detritus of her previous relationship, in this case a several-dicked monster who everyone thought was the coolest guy of all time and his infant son. The reason the story was so populated with freaks was because, well, I guess I just liked the weirdness of their presence and how mundane their existences were. So, yeah, I guess the monsters really were there for no reason. Does this mean that The White Girl and Kid Insomnia and Toner Monkey and all the other weird-ass freaks I've created are pointless? That the themes I'm out to explore are better explored via normal characters? Am I to abandon the things that bring me pleasure in creating comics?
Nah. I mean, everything I do in comics has an abundance of weird characters that are just there. I think "A Worrying Thing" (the story in question) could definitely be improved, but I think it looks more like it wasn't Mr. Nitz's cup of tea. But hey, he likes the cover, and that was really the battle I was out to win.
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